


Settle Down With Someone Nice

by scioscribe



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Friends to Lovers, M/M, Misunderstandings, Romantic Fluff, Unrealistically Downplayed Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:22:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22776337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/pseuds/scioscribe
Summary: Klinger could only think of one guy in the whole camp who could finesse the Army with that level of, well, finesse.  For some reason, Radar was pulling some strings for him.  And they couldn’t have been easy to pull, either, or, being a nice guy, Radar would have been yanking them on everybody’s behalf, not just his.  That meant it was a favor—maybe even a special kind of favor, because let’s face it, when a guy expedites another guy’s lingerie and his evening gowns and, hell, even his housecoat all the way to Korea, that had to mean something.
Relationships: Maxwell Klinger/Radar O'Reilly
Comments: 23
Kudos: 104





	Settle Down With Someone Nice

**Author's Note:**

> This was my Valentine's Day present for my wife, who wanted sweet Radar/Klinger. <3 I'm totally allowing the slight reality-bending of the last scene here on the grounds that there's a literal interrupted Radar/Klinger proposal in "Hey, Doc." Supposedly for something they're rehearsing, but I don't buy it.
> 
> Additional implied Hawkeye/Trapper and past casual Hawkeye/Klinger (plus Klinger/half the 4077).

“Here’s something I’ve been wondering,” Hawkeye said. “Half the time our mail is delayed for weeks or arrives looking like someone’s dog’s been using it for a chew toy. But somehow you wind up with—if I may so—regularly stylish ensembles. Mail order stuff. How the hell are you getting it?”

Klinger shrugged. “Fortune just tends to smile upon me, sir.”

“Aside from sticking you in Korea.”

“Well, it’s a little two-faced.”

“You’ve never even had so much as a hole in your nylons,” Hawkeye said, his voice getting actually gravelly with a kind of hunger for a regular postal service. “You don’t even have so much as a loose thread. Your mail is delivered to you by Hermes himself, on a pillow made out of clouds. Tell me how you do it.”

“I swear, I don’t know! I just get lucky!”

Hawkeye stared at him for a long moment and then said, “Well, if it’s not you, then somebody has to be doing something. This is the Army, things don’t just _happen_ to happen the way they’re supposed to. It would put MacArthur out of a job.”

Another wave of incoming casualties probably knocked the mystery right out of Hawkeye’s head, but for Klinger, the puzzle was a little more persistent, mostly because he really couldn’t believe he’d never thought about it before.

He always got good shipping times, too, all things considered. Hawkeye didn’t even know about that.

Klinger could only think of one guy in the whole camp who could finesse the Army with that level of, well, finesse. For some reason, Radar was pulling some strings for him. And they couldn’t have been easy to pull, either, or, being a nice guy, Radar would have been yanking them on _everybody’s_ behalf, not just his. That meant it was a favor—maybe even a special kind of favor, because let’s face it, when a guy expedites another guy’s lingerie and his evening gowns and, hell, even his housecoat all the way to Korea, that had to mean something.

He figured he had some kind of obligation to meet Radar halfway—and by doing something more than just looking pretty—so he buttonholed Radar in the Colonel’s office.

“What’s tomorrow’s movie supposed to be?”

“We’ve just got some serials,” Radar said. “A whole bunch of _Batman and Robin_ and some of _Ghost of Zorro_.”

“I miss the living Zorro,” Klinger said.

“Casualty of war, I guess.” He was looking at the gold lavaliere Klinger was wearing—a nice little piece that hung down against his collarbone and worked with the low neckline; in the absence of a proper bust, you did what you could to accentuate.

Klinger was going to go ahead and take that look as further confirmation that he was on the right track with this one. “Want to sit together and split a bag of popcorn?”

Radar’s eyes shot up from Klinger’s neckline to his face. His lips parted a little, promisingly, and then what came out was a slightly indignant, “Now how’d you go and get popcorn? The cook told me he was clean out of it weeks ago!”

“He was, and I got the last bit of it. So it’s two weeks old, cold, and stale, just to make it more appetizing.”

Radar brightened. “Oh, sure, I’ve had it like that. If you put enough salt on it, it’s not too bad—sort of like puffy white jerky.” With the popcorn question put to bed, his mind seemed to get freed up to concentrate on the rest of the invitation, and he started looking nervous. “And you want to… you know, have our chairs next to each other?”

“Sure. We’ve done it before.” Here, he’d promised to do some of the heavy lifting in all this. “I’ll wear something nice,” he offered.

Radar’s gaze went from nervous to glassy-eyed. “The dark blue silk thing with the sequins?”

“My most daring evening gown. You don’t think the backless look is too much?”

“Oh, no,” Radar said sincerely. “I think it looks really good.”

“Then the midnight silk it is.” He paused, and then just came out with it, “Hey, have you been doing something to make sure all my mail gets here in one piece?”

“I was sort of wondering when you’d figure that out,” Radar said. He looked like the bell had just been rung on some championship bout between sheepishness and pride; he pushed his glasses up his nose. “I mean, you know how the mail is around here! Stuff’s always being held up or wrecked. Sometimes even the letters from HQ to Colonel Blake get here so gummed-up with gunk that I can’t even steam them open right. Your clothes are delicate! If somebody didn’t keep an eye on them, they’d wind up with rips so bad it’d look like King Kong had been pawing at you.”

“I’ve gone to dinner-dances with Army brass, so I know what you mean.”

Radar looked confused.

“You know,” Klinger said. “They tell their friends they’re bringing me as a joke. Then they get a few drinks in them and they start to reevaluate their sense of humor—laughing at it even when they’ve got a hand up my skirts.”

Now Radar just looked appalled. “That’s no way to treat people.”

“Yeah. Turns out they don’t give generals all those stars for being top-notch guys.” He didn’t know why this wasn’t going the way he’d planned, and he didn’t know why it felt so weird that it wasn’t. “It doesn’t matter. I get a good dinner out of it. That’s what I’m trying to say.”

“What?”

“I appreciate the perks! And even if I didn’t, I like fooling around! I get lonely like everybody else. And the nurses and the girls from the village aren’t exactly beating my door down unless they want to borrow a stole, then I’m their new best friend.”

“I don’t know what you’re getting at,” Radar said slowly.

Klinger threw up his hands. “I’m saying, if you want a tumble in the mattress supply room, I’m game! You don’t have to work so hard! Not that I don’t appreciate it,” he added, because it wasn’t like he _wanted_ to have to struggle with regular Army mail like the rest of the peons.

Radar looked down at his shoes. He mumbled, “I think you got the wrong idea.”

That’d be bad. “Like you don’t want to?”

“Well, sure, but—” He broke off. “Choppers.”

And that was it for the next fifty-odd hours.

Even after all that and a night’s sleep, he didn’t know what to do with any of that. Who wanted to go to all that trouble without even getting a date out of it?

Maybe all Radar was liked was getting to look at him in dresses, which wouldn’t be the weirdest thing he’d ever heard of, and which would sure be no skin off his nose. He liked Radar better than anybody; Radar could look all he wanted to. Klinger just wanted to know what the hell was going on. So he sought out the two men in camp he trusted most to know all about the weirdest kind of sex stuff imaginable. And he plied them with martinis—or at least stood by while they drank them like they would have whether he’d been there or not.

“Something eating you, Klinger?” Trapper said.

He shrugged, feeling antsy about it. He kept thinking about Radar’s face when he’d made his mattress supply room offer—like somebody’d stuck a straw in him and slurped all his happiness out. “I don’t know, sirs. I tried to make a move on somebody and—”

“Put your high heel all the way into your mouth,” Hawkeye said.

“How’d you know?”

“It’s what you always do.”

“It is not!”

“Oh, right,” Hawkeye said. “I’m thinking of me.”

“You wear high heels?” Trapper said with mild interest.

“Only on the most special occasions.”

“I know some special occasions.”

They’d do that all night if he didn’t interrupt it. “All right, so I put my foot in my mouth. I think. I just don’t know how.”

Hawkeye sipped his martini. “Maybe you shouldn’t have suggested that you were only loved for your body.”

“Wait, you know what I’m talking about?”

The look Hawkeye was giving him had way too much in common with the ones he usually reserved just for Major Burns. “I just don’t think you should be fooling around with a kid’s heart when—”

“Are you gonna fill me in on all this later?” Trapper said, raising his eyebrows. “Because I don’t have a clue, and I’ve got patients to go look after.”

Hawkeye waved his hand and waited for Trapper to be out of the tent before he said, “And by the way, you ought to be glad he came to me about it instead of Henry.”

“I didn’t know he was going to go to anybody!”

“He’s Radar, he’s bad with secrets. Except when it comes to getting them. What the hell were you thinking?”

“What was I thinking? I still don’t even know what I did!”

“Klinger,” Hawkeye said, with a tense kind of patience, “Radar, I’ll grant you, has a dirty mind. The bleach has not yet been invented that will sanitize its filthy corners. But he also has a heart three sizes too big for his tiny body. And furthermore, Radar doesn’t move heaven, earth, and the Army Postal Service _just_ in exchange for sexual favors—believe me, I asked. For one single box of fudge from my father that actually arrived on time, I’d commit every obscenity in the book. I’d _invent_ some. And I’m not the only one. If all he wanted was a lay, and he was willing to do that much to get it, he’d have options. That’s what I’m saying.”

That tracked, just barely. “But he did say he was interested.”

Hawkeye rolled his eyes. “He’s interested in _you_ , you buffoon in a cocktail dress. You specifically. For more than a little bit of hello-how-are-you.” He took another drink. “Heart the size of Toledo,” he muttered, “and you stomped on it. And here I always thought you were the kind of nice girl someone could bring home to mother. You don’t have to swoon over him, but you could be a gentleman about it.”

“Since when is a fling not gentlemanly?” Klinger said. “Especially to you!”

“Since it’s with Radar! Our very own pint-sized mascot!”

“He’s not that short,” Klinger said.

“I’m sure he doesn’t seem that way to you,” Hawkeye said sweetly.

Klinger glared at him for a second, but he had better things to do than sulk over tall people. “You’re saying that he has… feelings.”

Hawkeye tapped the tip of his nose and then started to look a little more serious and a little less like he was going to walk Klinger down the aisle with a shotgun. “You really didn’t know, did you?”

Klinger shrugged uncomfortably. “It’s never happened before. Everything’s always just been for fun.”

“Have all the fun you want—but not at Radar’s expense. For him it’s real.” Hawkeye poured himself another martini. “Things aren’t quite the same on that side of the looking glass, you know.”

He did know, kind of. Radar O’Reilly. It’d be different with Radar—different than it had been with any of the other guys, even ones he’d liked, present company included. He needed to think it over. Assuming he could think about anything that wasn’t Radar getting all Iowa-earnest about the look of his backless dress. Or Radar getting sore on his behalf over generals having their Klinger cake and eating it too.

He said a Reader’s Digest condensed version of all that, leaving out the funny, sappy turn his head had taken now that it looked like it had gotten free rein to, and then paused at the tent door; he turned to look over his shoulder.

“ _You_ weren’t in love with me or anything, right, sir?”

Hawkeye toasted him. “For all your myriad delights, Klinger, my heart, alas, belongs to another.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“I’m just crazy about Betty Grable.”

*

He had a dream about Radar that night—one he could have halfway admitted to in public, even. They were in some kind of Iowa farmhouse, and Radar was making him scrambled eggs. Klinger had almost forgotten what good scrambled eggs looked like. These didn’t dissolve into liquid when you put a fork through them. There was sun coming in through the window, and he could see a spot where the cotton tablecloth had gotten worn a little thin from the saltshaker being moved back and forth across it. He was wearing the midnight blue gown Radar had wanted him to wear the movie, which was completely inappropriate for that hour of the day, but it didn’t seem to matter. Intermittently, there was a bear in the corner of the room—who knew what that was about?

Anyway, in the morning, he went to see Radar, who really wasn’t half as short as Hawkeye and Trapper kept ragging him about being. Klinger thought he was just the right size, really. Sort of halfway between friendly teddy bear and good old-fashioned boy next door.

Radar looked up from his desk with an awkward little smile. “I knew you were coming.”

“You always know.”

“Everybody’s got things they’re good at,” Radar said modestly.

Klinger cleared his throat. “I think I got my wires crossed a little the last time—you know.”

“Well, not completely,” Radar said. “I mean—I want to see _Batman and Robin_ , but I want to see all of it, you know? Not just the last couple of minutes of the last reel. Because then you don’t even know how they got into the fix with the Penguin or whoever. I don’t like just skipping to the end.”

“It’s a serial,” Klinger said. “Those things don’t always end anyway. Maybe you’d just be skipping to an especially good part.”

“Sure, but if it’s good—and _Batman and Robin_ , I’ve always really liked _Batman and Robin_ —I don’t know that I want to skip around at all. You could do it with _Ghost of Zorro_ , but—do you know what I mean?”

Not even a little.

Except he thought about that imaginary saltshaker, wearing down the tablecloth sliding back and forth, and how it meant that they must have had a whole bunch of dinners together sitting right in those same chairs. It wasn’t like it would have been the same thing to have just bought a tablecloth that already looked like it was about to get a hole in it. It wasn’t like he could have just landed in Korea and walked right up to Radar and made any of this happen. He wouldn’t even have known he wanted to.

So maybe he did know after all.

“Yeah,” he said. “Sometimes skipping around… you miss stuff.”

Radar’s whole face lit up. “And you want to see that stuff?”

“Sure. I just didn’t know that was on the menu.”

He really hadn’t. He’d never been in this kind of a fix before with another guy. He’d fooled around, sure, even a little back in the States, but for the most part he’d played it straight, fielded everything right down the middle. It was supposed to be kid-stuff, right? You grew out of it. Until Korea, when, hell, it had seemed like a harmless enough way to blow off some steam. Never mind feeling pretty, never mind having particular guys he liked better than others—anybody could have little things like that. But not going straight to fooling around—thinking about Iowa farmhouses—that was virgin territory. It made him nervous.

But so had putting on a dress, the first time, and now he had a wardrobe that would make Coco Chanel blush with envy.

He might have wanted to get the hell out of the war, but he wasn’t a _coward_.

Radar said, “Then if I planned something—because we already missed the movie and the next two that were supposed to be coming to us all caught fire in transit—that’d be okay?”

“That’d be really nice.”

“Wow!” He took off his glasses and worried at them for a minute with his shirt, and then, putting them back on, said shyly, “I like your cardigan.”

“It’s mauve,” Klinger said proudly.

“Wow,” Radar said again.

*

He spent the whole next morning in a sweat wondering what their date was going to turn out to be—and what the hell he was supposed to _wear_ for it—and in the end, it was a huge relief when Radar snagged him right as he was about to head into the mess tent. He was holding a huge wicker basket, one that looked like it was heavy enough to tip him over.

“I was wondering if maybe you wanted to go on a picnic?” Radar said.

“Sure, but if we bring this food outside, there’s a chance it might make a break for it.”

Radar smiled, his cheeks rounding a little. “I’m willing to risk it if you are.”

When he looked like that, Klinger was willing to risk just about anything.

They took one of the scratchy Army-issued blankets out to one of the handful of spots near the camp that could pass for a meadow. Radar started unloading things from the basket; it was all the usual mess tent crap until the very bottom.

“You got your hands on a salami,” Klinger said, a little catch in his voice like Radar had produced nectar from Olympus.

“And some of those sugar wafer cookies. My family sent them. The preserved stuff travels more or less okay, as long as you’re fine with eating some crumbs from where it gets squashed.” He opened up the cookies and took out one of the pink ones and crunched it, adding, “See?” with his mouth still partly full, showing the stub where the second half of the cookie would have been if it hadn’t snapped in the box. “But it doesn’t change the taste any.”

“You ought to take these over to the nurses’ tent.” He felt like he should make one last stab at it: the conventional life, plus or minus a couple of satin evening gowns. “If you’ve got real food, you can get any lunch date you want. With somebody else bringing the dessert, if you know what I mean.”

Radar looked down, his face about the same shade as the cookie crumbs he’d just dropped all over his shirt. “I do—but, uh, you’re really the only person I want to be, um, having dessert with. That’s what I kind of meant about all that serial stuff.”

Oh, what the hell. Klinger leaned forward and kissed him, not surprised even one bit to find out Radar tasted like sugar and Army-issued toothpaste, with one of the Swamp’s martinis for a chaser. It was nice—better than nice, really, especially when Radar’s hand landed on his thigh, hot through the gingham. He’d have worn something a little fancier if he’d known all this was going to happen. A gingham Dorothy-in-Oz dress worked for a picnic, though.

But thinking that did make him pull back for a minute, and he squashed down the smugness that came from looking at Radar’s fogged-up glasses.

“This isn’t just because you like my dresses, is it?”

“Oh, no,” Radar said earnestly. “I like just about all of you.”

**_Six Months Later_ **

****

“I always thought I’d wind up with, you know, a regular-type girl,” Radar said. “But I guess it’s just that I didn’t know anybody like you before Korea.”

“There’s nobody like me anywhere,” Klinger said. He lay back, resting his head in the little hollow between Radar’s shoulder and his chest, and felt Radar’s fingers start combing absently through his hair. “You think it would scandalize anybody if I wore white to the wedding?”

“I don’t think people ought to tell you what to wear to our own wedding,” Radar said, sounding outraged by the very thought of it. “Or, you know, our whatever-it-is. Besides, you look sweet in white.”

“And I’ve got just the thing. These little imitation pearls on the bodice, a whole lace train—I’ll look like a layer cake, but it’ll be worth it. What the hell, you only get not-married once.” He closed his eyes. “What are you going to wear, your uniform?”

Radar shook his head; Klinger could feel his chin moving. “Nah, I don’t want to stir up Majors Burns and Houlihan anymore than they are already. They’d be spitting nickels if I married you looking like I’m really in the Army. Hawkeye said he’d go into Seoul with me to pick out a tuxedo.”

“When?”

“This weekend. We’ve both got leave.”

“He’s going to wind up springing a bachelor party on you,” Klinger said sleepily. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

He could hear the grin in Radar’s voice: “That still leaves me an awful lot of options.”

“Well, I’ll know how much trouble you got up to by whatever gift you bring back. My forgiveness is expensive—I like diamonds and furs, but nothing too flashy.”

“Max?”

“Yeah?”

“I wouldn’t really, you know,” Radar whispered.

Klinger started to say, _I do_ , like he was warming up for the sort-of wedding, but instead he just nodded and snuggled further in, thinking this whole talk was one of the bits he would have skipped over—and he wouldn’t even have known what he was missing.


End file.
